Finder (software) - Finder 1.0 To 4.1

Finder 1.0 To 4.1

The original Finder, used with the MFS (Macintosh File System) always included a blank folder at the root level of every disk. A new blank folder would be created whenever that folder was renamed and used. Folders could not be placed inside of folders in Finder up to version 4.1. The folders were maintained only by Finder, and were not stored by the file system. As such, no two files could have the same name on a drive; folders were absent in application "open" dialogs (instead there would be simply a list of all files); and all folder information would be lost after rebuilding the desktop, dumping all files into the root level of the drive.

Finder also provided a "trash folder": the only way to delete a file was to first drag it to the trash folder, then empty the folder. However, the trash folder was also an illusion, and was not reflected on disk. The list of files in the trash was held only in memory. Finder therefore emptied the trash before it terminated, including before running any other application. If a crash intervened in the process, items that had been in the trash went back in their original home.

The original Finder was also the cause of much early user frustration due to slow speed of file copying, which would lead to dozens of disk-swaps on the single-drive original Macintosh, which was caused by a bug in the original Finder where if you drag the floppy disk icon somewhere else on the desktop, then pick it up and drag it to another floppy to copy it, it would result in more disk swaps than needed because the Finder forgot to free memory before copying. Though much of this problem could be attributed to the small amount of memory available on the Macintosh 128K, Apple attempted to address the issue with Finder 1.1g in May 1984.

Finder 1.xx supported System 1.0 (.97) through 1.x only.a

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